The Happiness Equation Quotes

“Start doing something, you'll continue.. why? Because motivation doesn't cause action. Action causes motivation.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Don't take advice,
The answers are all inside you,
Think deep and decide what's best,
Go forth and be happy,
And don't take advice.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“I am convinced that life is 10% what happens and 90% how I react to it.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Greek philosopher Epictetus says, “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“There is nothing more satisfying than being loved for who you are and nothing more painful than being loved for who you're not but pretending to be.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Thomas Jefferson said, “Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“A famous Persian proverb hung on my aunt’s kitchen wall reads, “I cried because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me--This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honored even half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Wherever you are, it is your own friends who make your world.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Just keep learning, keep changing and keep growing and promise me that you will never retire.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Dale Carnegie said, "Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours."

The Saturday Morning Test asks you to lean in to your natural passion to enrich your work and personal lives.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Teddy Roosevelt said, “The best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“It’s weird not to be weird.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Happy people don’t have the best of everything. They make the best of everything. Be happy first.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Rule #1: If Checking Account > $1,000, Move All $ over $1,000 into Investing Account.
Rule #2: If Investing Account > $1,000, Move All $ over $1,000 into Investments.
Rule #3: Never Break Rule #1 or Rule #2.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Because motivation doesn't cause action.
Action causes motivation.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“The American Psychosomatic Society published a study showing how Michael Babyak and a team of doctors found that three thirty-minute brisk walks or jogs even improve recovery from clinical depression. Yes, clinical depression.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Tell me something, Brahman: Do friends and colleagues, relatives and kinsmen, ever come to your house as guests?” “Yes,” the Brahman answered. “And tell me something, Brahman,” Buddha continued. “Do you serve them foods and delicacies when they arrive?” “Yes,” the Brahman answered, “I do.” “And tell me something, Brahman,” Buddha continued. “If they don’t accept them, to whom do those foods belong?” “Well, I suppose if they don’t accept them, those foods are all mine.” “Yes,” said Buddha. “In the same way, Brahman, I do not accept your anger and your criticism. It is all yours.” The Brahman was stunned and could think of nothing to say. His anger continued to bubble up inside him, but he had nowhere to put it. Nobody was accepting it or taking it from him. Buddha continued: “That with which you have insulted me, who is not insulting, that with which you have taunted me, who is not taunting, that with which you have berated me, who is not berating, that I don’t accept from you. It’s all yours, Brahman. It’s all yours. “If you become angry with me and I do not get insulted, then the anger falls back on you. You are then the only one who becomes unhappy. All you have done is hurt yourself. If you want to stop hurting yourself, you must get rid of your anger and become loving instead. “Whoever returns insult to one who is insulting, returns taunts to one who is taunting, returns a berating to one who is berating, is eating together, sharing company, with that person. But I am neither eating together nor sharing your company, Brahman. It’s all yours. It’s all yours.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Teddy Roosevelt famously said, “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Automate, regulate, effectuate all, remove decisions from your head. What are you left with?
Deep thinking, questioning, wondering..
Your aching brain will thank you”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“How to make every decision at twice the speed? Remove choice. 2.  What’s the counterintuitive way to having more time? Remove time. 3.  How to add an hour to the day with only one small change? Remove access.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Our problem-scanning machine (amygdala) and our serenity-now mood tape (prefrontal cortex) are at war.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“The only two modes your brain actually has and how to use them John Cleese, cofounder of Monty Python, knows a few things about removing access. Freeing your brain from the tyranny of “busy.” He is famous for removing access and creating space in his life. What was the effect? Oh, not much. Just scoring Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations and being in more than a hundred movies all the way into his seventies. As John described it in a speech to the organization Video Arts, we are in closed mode “most of the time when we’re at work. We have inside us a feeling that there’s lots to be done and we have to get on with it if we’re going to get through it all. It’s an active, probably slightly anxious mode, although the anxiety can be exciting and pleasurable . . . It’s a mode in which we’re very purposeful and it’s a mode in which we can get very stressed and even a bit manic.” What’s the opposite of this? John calls it open mode. That’s where your brain is free and playful and capable of achieving greatness. Sound slightly counterintuitive? Maybe. But by closing off access to your brain . . . you’re opening up your mind. “By contrast,” John says, “the open mode is a relaxed, expansive, less purposeful mode in which we’re probably more contemplative, more inclined to humor . . . and consequently, more playful. It’s a mode in which curiosity for its own sake can operate because we’re not under pressure to get a specific thing done quickly. We can play and that is what allows our natural creativity to surface.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Multitasking. Doing two or more things at once. How often do you hear people use that word? What does it mean? And where did it even come from? We have to go all the way back to a paper written by IBM in 1965 to find the origin of the word multitasking. How was it defined? “The ability of a microprocessor to apparently process several tasks simultaneously.” Yes, that is the actual meaning. Right from the paper. Want to read it again? This time let me underline one word. “The ability of a microprocessor to apparently process several tasks simultaneously.” Apparently? Apparently! What do they mean by apparently? You mean, even computers don’t actually process several tasks at the same time? Well, no. They don’t. Another quote, another underline from me: “Computer multitasking in single core microprocessors actually involves time-sharing the processor; only one task can actually be active at a time, but tasks are rotated through many times a second.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Afew years ago a group of researchers at the University of Kentucky stumbled upon pure academic gold: cardboard boxes stashed away and full of handwritten autobiographies written by nuns as they joined US convents in the 1930s and ’40s. So the researchers read these autobiographies and began sorting them into piles based on how positive the attitude and emotion were in each one. Here are a couple that show the difference between low and high positive emotion: Sister 1: I was born on September 26, 1909, the eldest of seven children, five girls and two boys. My candidate year was spent in the Motherhouse, teaching Chemistry and Second Year Latin at Notre Dame Institute. With God’s grace, I intend to do my best for our Order, for the spread of religion, and for my personal sanctification. Sister 2: God started my life off well by bestowing upon me a grace of inestimable value. The past year which I have spent as a candidate studying at Notre Dame College has been a very happy one. Now I look forward with eager joy to receiving the Holy Habit of Our Lady and to a life of union with Love Divine. Pretty different, aren’t they? Turns out it was easy for the researchers to categorize the autobiographies into four “levels of happiness” seventy years later and excitedly rub their hands together, squeal nerdy academic researcher squeals, and compare those dusty old autobiographies with how well the nuns were doing today. Now, keep in mind the best thing about studying nuns is that all the difficult, hard-to-control variables were controlled. None of them smoked, drank, had sex, got married, or had kids . . . ever! They even lived in the same cities, ate the same foods, and wore the same clothes. (Who’s doing a load of whites? Nobody! Ever!) Therefore, their positive attitude seventy years ago was the prime indicator of how long they lived. That’s why this study is so powerful. And guess what the researchers found out? Revolutionary findings that sent academic circles buzzing. Staggering takeaways about the power of starting with a positive lens in your life. They published the results and called them “Positive Emotions in Early Life and Longevity: Findings from the Nun Study.” Here’s what they found: The happiest nuns lived ten years longer than the least happy nuns. By age eighty, the most happy group had lost only 25% of its population, whereas the least happy group had lost 60%. 54% of the most happy nuns reached the age of ninety-four, compared to 15% of the least happy nuns. The Nun Study shows an incredibly strong link between how happy you are today and how long you’re going to live. And it’s not just length, either! Think of it: You will be happier through all those years, too. Happy people don’t have the best of everything. They make the best of everything. Be happy first.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. “Which road do I take?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?” was his response. “I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Otherwise they are neurotically barking, scratching, or tearing up the sofa. A working dog needs to work. And I am a working dog.” So what kind of dog are you? If you like thinking, if you like trying, if you like creating, if you like teaching, if you like learning, if you like connecting, then chances are good you’re a working dog, too. And what do working dogs do? They work. They never give up. They never stop doing. They never retire. If you like neurotically barking, scratching, and tearing up the sofa, let’s chat. Because the truth is, you always need to do something. Something different, something interesting, something you love.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

“Authenticity removes regrets from your life.”
― Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything